Category Archives: Social Media Marketing

Post navigation

The movie industry’s recent habit of reboots, remakes, and retcons isn’t entirely surprising. If you haven’t noticed, areas tied to comic book giants are more prone to this as well as old but still successful franchises like Godzilla.

It’s only natural actually. After all, touched or untouched, these franchises make a lot of money by themselves. They’re ties to the past also make it easier to pass on its messages. And in B2B marketing, keeping a message fresh for a long time will be key to making sure business lives on in the same way. So what are the key techniques?

It’s said there are only a few ways for a poet to make money. Promoting one’s own work can be hard and harder still given the fickle nature of publishing companies.

But in B2B marketing, the field of content creation is beginning to raise its difficulty to that level. Providing quality content requires both creativity and relevance from writers. You don’t even need to apply actual poetry. It’s enough to know those two elements determine how efficient your content is at making promising leads out of a target audience.

Then again, you might think a poet’s price is exactly the number you need to measure the cost of creativity.

Shakespeare is a very iconic historical character due to his famous literary works that are still celebrated today. Known as one of the most greatest and influential poets in history, you can’t have National Poetry Month without hearing at least one mention of him.

William Shakespeare’s impact on language and communication extends from theatre and literature to present-day films and everyday conversation. Tag lines like “Fight fire with fire” (King John) and “a wild goose chase” (Romeo and Juliet) are attributed to him.

Yet despite the fame, is he a role model for content marketers everywhere? One would think so given that creativity plays a vital role in engaging content. However, the quality of Shakespearean work and that of good marketing can have varying standards:

Whether you know it or not, your business is already using content marketing as part of the overall marketing strategy. It’s arguably the most critical piece of any inbound marketing strategy.

But how exactly do you define it? Is it blogging? Is it PR? Will this even include the content of your telemarketing scripts or email templates?

Let’s start with a general definition. Content marketing is really about providing valuable information or creative content to current and potential customers for the purpose of:

Building trust

Brand awareness

Positive sentiment

A successful content marketing campaign presents you as one trusted expert in your field. In turn, this makes it easier to maintain a long-term business relationship by holding your focus on it instead of just winning your daily sales quota.

Strategies in this type of marketing analyze the different ways content is found across the buyer’s journey, the customer lifecycle, and other different customer experiences and touchpoints. It also looks for means of integrating it with other (bigger) marketing strategies.

But despite the many ones you’re likely to find, they have the three objectives in common. That way, no no matter how many different forms that marketing content takes, you can keep it consistent.

Knowing your Buyer’s Preferences – Buyer personas have an impact on content marketing just as any other. In fact, content marketing only makes them more dynamic. You will always want to know what kind of buyer would buy what kind of product. This leads to understanding the different kinds of people who prefer different kinds of content (and in different kinds of channels).

Using Goals to Define ‘Better Content’ – Are you trying to build traffic? Improve conversion? Many people don’t know just how much of their marketing is using the content you create. That’s why you should try aligning their goals along with yours.

Adapt to Industry Changes – When an industry changes, so do the buyers it caters too. Look at how B2B marketing itself has changed because of the new trends in content marketing. Thanks to birth of search engines and social media, they have again redefined content’s role. It’s the same when you learn of other changes in your industry and need to inform the target market about these changes.

You may not even need to immerse yourself completely to understand content’s vital role. You just need to recognize what that role is. Don’t worry about giving a bigger slice of your budget for an exclusive content marketing campaign. Content itself can just ties with your other marketing goals without too much of a demand on your investment.

With last week’s release of The Winter Soldier, fans and moviegoers are still talking about how the adaptation paid off despite the political messages clearly injected throughout the film.

Marketer’s can learn a lot about how Marvel’s recent movie just flawlessly throws in the politics without the immediate backlash political messages usually entail. The themes were set to be a political thriller in that very sense. The film bore clear influences from recent events like Edward Snowden exposing the NSA’s recent actions. How can marketers do the same? Inject a message that would normally raise the guard of an audience?

A company’s logo is a fundamental part of every brand. It represents their identity and makes them instantly recognizable. Most corporations spend millions tinkering with their logos, trying to figure out what will stick in the minds of customers. When a customer views one, it triggers all sorts of thoughts and emotions making some of them unforgettable. Unfortunately for brands, those aren’t always positive.

Parodies change and poke fun of what the original brand represented (and not always with explicit permission). How they do it though can be just the kind of positive/negative feedback you need in your B2B marketing campaign.

The internet is like the ocean: it seems so open, so free. It feels a place where you can put up whatever digital property you want. But because you are free you also have the temptation to mess with what’s already there. Scariest part is you’re not the only one and not all resist temptation.

Think of your old marketing like a literal silo that stored grain for the population but eventually became insufficient because you were getting more sources of grain. That’s why you ended up building more silos to accommodate.

On the other hand, will these silos eventually replace the oldest one? It’s like one day, you’re suddenly presented with the option of tearing it down. However, everyone’s actually grown attached to this old monument. It represented your original marketing identity.

How do you maintain your old identity without necessarily ignoring the need to maintaining the silos representing your new sources of leads?

It’s not news that today’s B2B marketing has been defined by digital technology. However, the impact hasn’t all been positive.

And given that its spring time, its themes of nature and fresh starts really contrasts with the heavy overdose that tech puts on, marketing included. Sometimes the cost of digital comes in different forms instead of just your marketing dollars.

When such costs arise, why not go back to your roots and give older forms of marketing a try?

Print and Direct Mail

It’s true that brochures, leaflets, coupons and other print-based mediums now point to websites and email ads. That doesn’t mean that a physical letter shouldn’t serve as a visible reminder of your business. A website can be forgotten and erased at the click of a mouse. That’s not the case of having your brochure still on their desk. And if it’s well targeted, it can be harder to throw out when it addresses a prospect’s particular need.

Promotional Freebies

Whether it’s a pen with a contact number or a paper weight with your business logo, promotional products keep your business at the forefront of a decision maker’s minds. Select objects that can be useful in their work environment and never underestimate how the most innocent reminder can trigger a buying action.

Business Cards

Business cards work well in two ways. They can either provide you with a prospect’s contact information or connect you with someone who can help your business in another way.

You can say that the business card is really symbol of connections way before LinkedIn was even invented. A single one can connect you to a provider of much needed services but they in turn could connect you to more clients!

Promotional Events

It can be as small as a community fair to a major exhibitions. Advertising your participation in these events always gets you more exposure. They’re also good places to include in your own business promos, hand out discounts, and share about your business to live attendees.

Alone, digital marketing tools can still be limited in reach, regardless of popularity. Therefore a dependence on them can be unhealthy. Get back to your roots some time and give traditional marketing a try.

Anniversaries symbolize the birth of something important and had lasted the ups and downs of its life. Even for a business, that’s something you have to acknowledge (if not celebrate). This applies to not just your own company’s anniversary but the anniversary of your own B2B clients!